"Ohm"

90

High-profile rock bands rarely thrive for long, and it’s nothing short of astonishing that Yo La Tengo is still batting over .300 nearly 30 years into their existence. On “Ohm”, they sound up-to-date but ready to walk away for the simplest reason: 'cause it’s been fun. There’s always been a push-and-pull in their output between still lifes and splattered abstractions, and they’ve been unafraid to wander as far as necessary in either direction. “Ohm” has them occupying the center, its circular riff unfolding over a soft, rustling rhythm before Ira Kaplan’s familiar guitar fuzz both curdles into sludge and cuts through the dissonance. Where it’s usually easy to tell who’s singing what, here Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew’s voices are braided into a hushed mantra of inner tranquility. “Nothing ever stays the same, nothing’s explained,” check; “sometimes the good guys lose,” check; “the harder we go, the longer we pry,” check. It makes more sense the more they repeat it. —Jeremy Gordon

"Picacho"

89

Pokémon, I'm told, are grouped by type: grass, fire, water, electric, "normal." Atlanta's Young Thug may have saddled himself with rap's most generic moniker, but don't mistake the guy for a normal-type anything. Case in point: "Picacho", four minutes of unchecked eccentricity named for that yellowest of Pokémon. Or, sort of, anyway; as Jay Neutron's beat Jigglypuffs around him, Thug walks through the club, decked out in diamonds so sparkly, they "just peek at you." "Picacho" is overloaded with Thug's not-normal cadences, what-in-the-world metaphors, and peculiar—and peculiarly catchy—way with melody, coming off something like Auto-Tune-era Lil Wayne attempting to out-oddball any-era Lil B. Like his 1017 label boss Gucci Mane in his glory days, Thug flips the almost-titular Pokémon's name every which way he can, serving up one of the year's most unlikely earworms in the process. Thug's otherworldly sing-raps float right over "Picacho" in a manner that makes better-known space-cases like Future sound positively earthbound. It's a deliriously inventive, break-the-mold performance by one of rap's fastest-rising weirdos. —Paul Thompson

"Vital"

88

"Vital" is one of the most crushing Grouper tracks to date: we hear dim guitar strums echo under Liz Harris’ somber, inaudible self-harmonizing, and, in the distance, ambient tape hiss hits like crashing waves. There are hints of vocal melodies, like little hymns humming under the wreckage, but the words are warbled and distant, eventually disappearing without explanation. These are moments that serve as a reminder of the ways music about death can bring out the most subtly, eerily gorgeous dichotomies: it's haunting but calming, confusing but meditative. "Vital" comes off like Liz Harris is trying and failing. It's devastating, vulnerable, and real. —Liz Pelly

— Via

4AD

The National

"Pink Rabbits"

87

The closer the National inch toward "boring"—or at least the cartoon version of "boring" that their detractors paint over them—the better, more powerful, more complex, more human, their music grows. On Trouble Will Find Me, Matt Berninger's husky murmur was at its most subdued, the tempos reined-in to their most stately, and the heat dialed down to a one-bubble-every-hour kind of simmer. Everything important they have to say about humanity occurs at this temperature—from this vantage point, they have the ability see things that others don't. Things like the "white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park" that Berninger picks out astutely on "Pink Rabbits", Trouble Will Find Me's emotional centerpiece and maybe the most resonant song the band's ever made. The song has almost no rhythmic motion—the drum rolls are mournful little stutters punctuating a falling sigh. It's the first National song one could credibly imagine being sung by, say, Elton John, and in fact, there is a conspicuous trace of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" in its DNA. It's their grandest, warmest expression of Berninger's brand of wry empathy, one that recognizes the banality of our daily heartbreak and treats it with tenderness. "You didn't see me, I was falling apart," Berninger sings. But this song sees you. —Jayson Greene

"Paranoid" [ft. Joe Moses]

86

So, Ty Dolla $ign has a problem. I'll let him tell it: "I see two of my bitches in the club, and I know they know about each other." His lilting drawl indicates not dread but a perverse excitement. As he lets us know later—"Both my bitches drive Range Rovers/ None of my bitches can stay over"—it's not like this is going to follow him home, anyway. The 28-year-old brat is R&B's most brazen player and this is his Jerry Springer moment, trapped in a love triangle of his own construction with DJ Mustard's slippery organs and rattlesnake hi-hats playing the role of host nudging the trio towards the explosive final act. Except "Paranoid" has no conclusion. Was Ty being set up or was he just paranoid? Did the girls—in the same red bottoms and fragrance—even see each other? My guess is that in Ty Dolla $ign's world this is such a frequent occurrence that the resolution isn't even worth mentioning—if he even sought one out in the first place. —Jordan Sargent

"Q.U.E.E.N." [ft. Erykah Badu]

85

A common criticism of Janelle Monáe is that the idea of her music outstrips the reality, and in this case that's completely true. "Q.U.E.E.N.", the early advance track from her sophomore album The Electric Lady, was also her first single since a low-key guest turn on 2011's Grammy-winning fun. chart-topper "We Are Young". Like that song, "Q.U.E.E.N." has a subtle but crucial cameo, here by fellow grand soul-funk-pop starship trooper Erykah Badu, and its message of follow-your-arrow transcendence came as label brass were pitching the album as the one that would get Monáe over on mainstream radio. Her outsider's anthem was supposed to help make her an insider.

That didn't quite happen. "Q.U.E.E.N." failed to crack Billboard's Hot 100, and Monáe was shut out of this year's Grammy nominations, but it's the insiders' loss. The success of Lorde's similarly convention-critiquing, sovereignty-themed smash drives home the audacity of this one's concept. Come on: A Prince-ly (and, later, Prince-remixed) celebration of difference that segues via classic Badu-ism "the booty don't lie" to a collective-conscious-rap outro? No wonder radio was confused. But even if Monáe/Badu's ode to freakiness made others uncomfortable, it enjoyed a built-in audience of alone-dancers and mirror-twerkers who love it for what it is, not what it might've been. These two women could only ever be royals. They just happen to rule their own galaxy. —Marc Hogan

"Recover"

84

There’s nothing particularly complicated about Chvrches' formula: the 1980s synth-pop palette buffed to a contemporary shine; the wide-eyed vocal, courtesy of Lauren Mayberry, that falls to just the right side of hysteria; the occasional shouty "oh" refrain. What makes it so good is the conviction with which it’s delivered—not to mention the ruthless efficiency with which this Scottish trio hits the emotional bullseye time and time again. “Recover” certainly doesn’t hang around: we’re launched into the anthemic stratosphere within 25 seconds of that first steroidal snare hit, and there we remain pretty much for the duration. Personal drama—in this case, a relationship hanging in the balance—is presented in heart-burstingly epic terms. With these sorts of high theatrics, there’s always a risk of overshooting and landing on something absurdly overblown. But Chvrches’ aim proved to be unerring. —Angus Finlayson

"New You"

83

My Bloody Valentine’s comeback after a 22-year lapse in albums, mbv, was both a surprise and a complete lack of one. That dichotomy is embodied by “New You”, an mbv cut that suggests the past two decades may just have been a daydream trapped in a spiral in mastermind Kevin Shields’ inner ear. Tethered to the loopy funk that underpinned much of 1991’s epochal Loveless, “New You” lopes along hypnotically as singer-guitarist Bilinda Butcher exhales notes like lungfuls of fog. It isn’t the most immediately catchy or tinnitus-inducing moment of dream-pop bombast on mbv,but “New You” marks the moment where the album, and My Bloody Valentine as a whole, slips back into a confident gear. Every watermark of the band’s classic work is still at play, but here there’s a soft, haunting nuance to the melodic bends and sweetly stuttering tremolo that feels only as new as mbv needed to be. —Jason Heller

"Open Eye Signal"

82

Sometimes it seems like electronic music has two primary molds: austere minimalism and extreme party-starting maximalism. Neither is more valid than the other, and there's plenty of middle ground between, but it's rare that an artist manages to take elements of both and meld them successfully. Enter Jon Hopkins, or rather, shift your gaze to Jon Hopkins, who has been on the periphery of music for awhile: collaborating with Imogen Heap, Brian Eno, and Coldplay, releasing a good-not-great solo album in 2009, and then bursting forward this year with "Open Eye Signal", an exceptional song that never collapses under the weight of its crunchy synths. It also never really commits to a full-on drop. Instead, it's nearly eight minutes of carefully constructed bliss that weaves ambient howls between pulsing synths that stack on top of each other until they disappear completely, giving way to the track's final two minutes of warped percussion. —Sam Hockley-Smith

— Via

PMR

Disclosure

"Help Me Lose My Mind" [ft. London Grammar]

81

There were a number of human voices featured on Settle, the staggering debut album from the English duo Disclosure. Surfacing amid Guy and Howard Lawrence’s muscular house productions, they ranged from hip-hop preacher Eric Thomas to Friendly Fires’ Edward Macfarlane to Jessie Ware, while album highlights introduced fellow up-and-comers like Sam Smith and AlunaGeorge. But they saved the most heart-arresting vocal turn for last. Introducing London Grammar’s Hannah Reid to the world on album closer “Help Me Lose My Mind,” Disclosure slowed their tempo down to 110, coupled a closed hi-hat beat to a rattle that swelled and receded like cicadas, and created a track that sounds like a lost 90s classic. Reid’s voice falls somewhere between Everything But the Girl’s Tracey Thorn or Beth Orton on those early Chemical Brothers’ productions. When she confesses at the chorus “You help me lose my mind/ And you believe something I can’t define,” it makes for one of the year’s ineffable moments. —Andy Beta